Most contemporary web sites can be characterized by two primary features. First, they are dynamically generated by database-driven content, and second, this content is kept separate from its eventual form. With sportsBabel, for example, Wordpress stores each post in a MySQL database and when the page is loaded, a PHP file calls for various fields (eg. post header, post body, date, author) to be retrieved in a particular order and structured in a particular way. But that only gives us a web page with plain text and images; how does the data retrieved from the database get sorted into the appropriate places on the page, how does the header for every post become blue and how does the footer for every post get marked up with barcodes?

Form is given to the page's data just before it is displayed when the PHP file calls what is referred to as a cascading style sheet (CSS). Essentially, the CSS file says, take every piece of data that has been structurally referred to as "header level one" and make it bigger, blue, Trebuchet MS font, etc. The CSS for this type of style looks like this:

The beauty of CSS lies in its scalability: when you have a web site of three pages, making layout changes or site redesigns is not that much of a hassle. But when your site is database-driven and/or grows to hundreds or thousands of pages (if sportsBabel was created manually, it would comprise over 1,000 pages), trying to change "header level one" to a dark green serif font is a major challenge. The beauty — and practicality — of keeping form and content separate in web site design becomes readily apparent.

But what about with television? Could we see the same thing happen in TV program design?

From time to time I will flip to the Raptors TV channel and catch some of an NBA Hardwood Classics game. Though the games are usually from the early 1980s to the mid 1990s, I am always startled at first glance by how dated they look. Have televisual production and distribution technologies really made such great strides in a decade and a half? (Keep in mind that my personal televisual consumption technologies haven't exactly made astonishing gains: I'm watching digital cable on a old tube television, not Hi-Def on a 1080p plasma.)

If so, then why hasn't anyone anticipated such improvement and worked to ensure that libraries of legacy footage will always look as pristine as the technology of the day will allow? Why should the technical limitations of the medium today be the determining factor in how it will be presented years from now? In other words, is it not better to capture the content separately and then mark it up form-wise at the time of presentation such that an NBA Hardwood Classics game doesn't look so, ummm … classic?

The reason we don't do it today is that we tend to conceive of television in two-dimensional terms, despite the fact that it has been reduced to this plane from a three-dimensional reality. But television doesn't really exist anymore, does it? In other words, even if we still believe that we are watching a planar, "television" medium, we need to get beyond the limits of a two-dimensional mindset.

The technology to separate the content and form of three-dimensional data currently exists. This type of "photography" is essentially what occurs with motion capture in the construction of sports videogames. Capturing points of light as content allows for the digital creation and replication of a wireframe skeleton on top of which formal elements such as flesh, hair, uniforms and running shoes may be added. But motion capture photography takes place months before game production is completed and viewing by the public occurs. For form and content to be separated in a live sports television environment, however, we need to shrink this temporal lag and capture athletes volumetrically in real-time.

Of course, this is a major leap technologically-speaking, but one that is presumably solved as chip processing and graphics rendering solutions become faster and cheaper. Another challenge for live three-dimensional sports television production is the motion capture suit that allows for different points of light to be isolated by the camera, which is prohibitive for normal athletic performance. But other technologies are beginning to erode the dependence on such a suit for the creation of volumetric imagery. The "bullet time" simulated high speed photography for Michael Jordan's IMAX dunk, ProZone's soccer athlete tracking system, and the EyeToy videogame interface are all making rapid advances in what is possible without the requirements of a traditional motion capture apparatus.

From here, one could "mark-up" the volumetric content with formal stylesheets that, for example, could change a team's uniform colours, improve the lighting conditions at the arena, customize the corporate sponsors for different audiences, or take advantage of other output devices that might follow the television, such as a holographic projector. In other words, the static archival document is no longer the sole option for professional sports leagues going forward.

Comments

3 responses to Separating Form and Content

This shows how media technology is ever-changing and extending its flexibility for great improvement specifically for television and video games to entice the general public. The television is a great invention in that it allowed for communication and broadcasting of sporting events all around the world in a fast and convenient fashion.

With technology and graphics, when talking about capturing points of light as content allowing for the digital creation and replication of a wireframe skeleton it can be related to the subject of biomechanics. Biomechanics is the application of mechanical principles in the study of living organisms. The mechanics part deals with the branch of physics that analyzes the actions of forces on particles and mechanical systems. When studying kinematics in biomechanics it is the study of the description of motion, including considerations of space and time. Video and film are the main tools used for measuring kinematic quantities and with the continual improved advancements in the technology and the widespread availability, durability and ease of use. The standard video gives sixty resolvable pictures per second and even more for more commercial uses. Just as human bodies are created for television purposes, reflective joint markers and placed on all the joints on the human body so they can be tracked by a camera for automatic digitizing for the movement. In previous decades this use to be done all by hand by individuals and computer software did not exist to calculate the data. This shows how technology has advanced and allowed for research in physical activity that will be beneficial.

In the past, I think, it is important to have these "classics" be in their original form, including the style and level of technology we, as a population, were capable of at that current time. The extent to which our television technology had developed at different times, helps to mark points in history, as well as allows us to define by date, what period of time the sporting event took place in. Even though form and strucute of the game itself, has developed and changed over time, as well as technology, I believe they should be evolving together.

To an avid basketball fan, I would not think that the advancments in technology would substract from the skill an athlete had, and therefore, not subtract from the enjoyment they felt when observing the game. These changes in technology, that we can look back and visually experience, help us to mark our advancements in technology, televesion specifically.

The idea of seperating form and content is also, I feel, a way that corporations could use to maximize there renvenue. As discussed in this post pertaining to the idea that different sponsors and advertising could be substituted into the game for different geographical areas, this is soley benefiting the corporate media, and not necessarily the fans. Similar to the computer and its seperation of form and content, if this were possible throught television, it would allow corporate media the opportunity to alter previously played games and therefore increase their profit with this technology. Who is really benefiting?

If television sets can also be upgraded to have high-definition, plasma, liquid crystal display, and many more advancments, the technology of watching "classic" sporting events has already evolved in our homes.

Televised production and distribution technologies have made some significant strides with respect to instant replays, breaking down plays, and analyzing teams and players. With this advanced technology, the production companies are able to attract the attention of different viewers who would not be normally drawn to the sport. An example of this could be for last years NBA finals the main theme song was sung by the pop group the Pussy Cat Dolls. The NBA created a music-like video that showcased the Pussy Cat Dolls as well as the key NBA players that were playing in the finals. Another example of technology is through the half-time analysts being show us a break-down of the plays that are working for the teams. This technology is also a great teaching tool for people who are learning the game of basketball. They are able to get these great angles of the plays through the many cameras that are positioned above the nets, above the courts, and camera men on the sidelines. Advancements of technology have enabled the NBA to expand from the United States to many countries around the world. They are able to broadcast their games of Yao Ming, in China thus opening up the large Chinese consumer market.
NBA Classic Hardwood games are my favourite games to watch because you get to watch a completely different style of basketball. I believe that the NBA should update the quality of the NBA classics so that the games would appeal to their mass market. The content of the game will not be affected; therefore it will stay a classic game. Technology can create a clearer and crisper image that will attract more viewers. Advancements in technology have aided the NBA tremendously today.

Everywhere where there is interaction between a place, a time and an expenditure of energy, there is rhythm.

Henri Lefebvre

sportsBabel

sportsBabel examines the aesthetics, politics and poetics of sport and physical culture, weaving between materiality, information, intuition and intellect. The notes posted here should be understood as emerging from an ongoing program of research-creation.

Threads of inquiry include: the security-entertainment complex and the militarization of sport; mediated sport as a spectrum of interactive possibility; the experiential qualities of postmodern sporting spaces; the cyborg body athletic manifest as mobile social subject; and the potential politics of a sporting multitude.

sportsBabel is produced by Sean Smith, an artist, writer and athlete living in Toronto, Canada. He holds a PhD in Media Philosophy from the European Graduate School in Switzerland and has exhibited and performed internationally as part of the Department of Biological Flow, an experimental collaboration in arts-based research inquiry with Barbara Fornssler. He was the inaugural Artist/Scholar-in-Residence at the University of Western Ontario in 2011-12, a participant at the Wood Land School – The Exiles residency in 2013, and one of the curators of Channel Surf, a 200km canoe journey and open platform for the arts that was one of 5 projects worldwide accepted to Project Anywhere in 2015.

He is currently adjunct faculty in wearable sculpture at OCAD University, a sessional lecturer on cartographies of the control society at the University of Toronto Scarborough, and one of the founding members of the Murmur Land Studios curatorial collective -- an experimental field school initiative begun in 2017 that offers event-based pedagogy in art, philosophy, kinaesthetics, ecology and camping community for the post-anthropocene era.

Sean's poetic work has appeared in Brave New Word, One Imperative, a glimpse of, Inflexions, the sexxxpo pwoermds anthology and the Why Hasn't JB Already Disappeared tribute anthology to Jean Baudrillard. He has performed poetic-philosophy work at Babel, Tuning Speculation, the Blackwood Gallery's Running with Concepts conference, and the Art in the Public Sphere speakers series at the University of Western Ontario's Department of Visual Arts. His first full manuscript, Overclock O'Clock, was published by Void Front Press in 2017, while three other chapbooks, tununurbununulence vOo.rtex, Verbraidids, and Syncopation Studies have been released in the past year.

sportsBabel was the basis for the Global Village Basketball project (2009-2011), which was an unfunded 24-hour basketball event that attempted to network together various pickup games from around the world into one meta-game; at its peak, players from 9 different countries joined the game to collectively score over 2,000 baskets in a meta Red vs. Blue contest. His other sports-art work has been presented in such varied spaces as HomeShop in Beijing during the 2008 Olympics, the Main Squared community arts festival in Toronto, SenseLab's Generating the Impossible research-creation event in Montreal, and in the courtyard of the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art during Nuit Blanche.

His latest project, Aqua Rara, weaves a practice of embodied art-philosophistry together with athletics and kairotic time to work as a performance-text between myriad water ecologies, swimming gestures, and watching the Aquarium Channel endlessly on loop.

department of biological flow

The Department of Biological Flow is a project of research-creation by Sean Smith and Barbara Fornssler exploring the concept of the moving human body as it is integrated with broader information networks of signal and noise.

The reference is from George Lucas' epic 1971 movie, THX 1138, in which a state-controlled intensification of communication processes manages every facet of daily life in a futuristic society, regulating the flux of all human subjects in work, leisure and love.

Though the Department exists in homage to Lucas’ vision, our consideration of biological flow seeks to reinvigorate the agency of the (in)human subject in its negotiations with economic and political structures both material and immaterial.